National Audit Office has criticised the federal government’s poor processes in Murray-Darling water buybacks

The Australian, 17 July 2020:

The National Audit Office has criticised the federal government’s Murray-Darling water buybacks, saying the Department of Agriculture “did not ­develop a framework designed to maximise value for money”. 

In an audit of the department’s water procurement practices, the ANAO found that there was “limited evidence of app­ropriate assessment” to justify the price paid by the federal government to private owners for water to be set aside for environmental purposes. 

Additionally, “the department did not negotiate the price for the water entitlements it purchased in all but one instance”, the audit report found. 

The audit office looked at water purchases worth a total of $190m across nine catchment areas between 2016 and 2019. 

Water for the environment is used to improve the health of ­rivers, wetlands and flood plains. ANU Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy director Quentin Grafton said the “most damning indictment” from the ANAO report was the finding that the government, as a result of poor processes, paid too much for the water. 

“Taxpayers’ money has been wasted,” Professor Grafton said. 

The ANAO said that “probity management arrangements were different to those applied to open tenders, and conflict of interest declarations were not clearly documented”. 

Professor Grafton blamed the lack of value for money on the government’s decision to run the buybacks on a limited tender basis, despite the fact it “already had an open tender process that had been working highly effectively for a number of years”. 

The report noted that the ­government had spent $21.5m on ­purchasing water rights from the Warrego River in southwest Queensland and the Lowbidgee flood plain in the Murrum­bidgee wetlands, despite the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office having assessed the water as being of questionable en­vironmental benefit, or as being unreliable.....

Looking back at Scott Morrison in 2019:

In light of the 'Water' findings released this week, it's interesting to revisit one of Morrison's pre-election pressers.#auspol pic.twitter.com/RJ92ZlhzZa

— 💧Teresa Randal (@RandaltsRandal) July 18, 2020